Largest suburbs in Australia

1. 1

   Point Cook, VIC

   Population 66,781 · Median income $2,392/wk · SEIFA 1066

   Point Cook lies about 22 kilometres south-west of central Melbourne, on the shore of Port Phillip Bay in the City of Wyndham, and is today the most populated suburb in Australia. It was named in 1836 after John M. Cooke, a mate aboard the survey vessel Rattlesnake, which charted part of the bay that year. The pastoralist Thomas Chirnside took up the land in 1853 and built a substantial homestead, running it for hunting and horse breeding as part of a sprawling Western District estate. In 1912 the Federal Government bought a large parcel here to establish the Australian Flying Corps; its success in the First World War led to the founding of the Royal Australian Air Force, and Point Cook is remembered as the air force's birthplace and the home of the RAAF Museum. Long a quiet rural and military district, the suburb began its rapid transformation into a major residential growth area only in the late 1990s, and its bayside wetlands remain an important habitat for migratory birds.

2. 2

   Craigieburn, VIC

   Population 65,178 · Median income $1,798/wk · SEIFA 956

   Craigieburn sits about 25 kilometres north of central Melbourne, a satellite suburb on the city's northern urban-rural fringe in the City of Hume, rising towards Mount Ridley at its edge. The Wurundjeri people are the first people of the area. The suburb takes its name from an old bluestone inn that once served travellers along the Old Sydney Road; the name joins the Gaelic craigie, meaning craggy, with the Scots word burn, a stream. Craigieburn was a small farming hamlet by the 1860s, gained a railway station on the line to Seymour in 1872, and stayed quiet until 1972, when the first big residential subdivision began its transformation into one of Melbourne's major growth suburbs. The Hume Highway, which long ran through the centre, was diverted around the town by the Craigieburn Bypass in 2005, and the railway line was electrified through to Craigieburn in 2007. Today it is a large, fast-growing and notably multicultural suburb with extensive new estates, shopping centres and sporting facilities.

3. 3

   Tarneit, VIC

   Population 56,370 · Median income $2,103/wk · SEIFA 1010

   Tarneit is a rapidly growing outer suburb of Melbourne, about 25 km west of the city centre in the City of Wyndham. The Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation were the first inhabitants of the area. European settlers used the land for grazing from the 1830s, and the name — recorded when the district was surveyed in 1839–1840 — is said to come from a Wathaurong word for the colour white. Tarneit stayed rural and sparsely settled until large-scale residential subdivision began in the early 2000s, with much of today's arterial road network still following an early square-mile grid. One of the few colonial-era landmarks is Doherty's House, a bluestone homestead built in the 1870s, whose walls and chimney survive a later fire. The suburb's growth was transformed by the Regional Rail Link, which opened in 2015 with a new Tarneit station offering a faster route into the city than the older Werribee line.

4. 4

   Melbourne, VIC

   Population 54,941 · Median income $1,448/wk · SEIFA 1076

5. 5

   Pakenham, VIC

   Population 54,118 · Median income $1,664/wk · SEIFA 958

   Pakenham is a suburb on the south-eastern edge of Melbourne, about 53 km from the central business district and the most populous town in the Shire of Cardinia. It lies in the traditional Country of the Kulin nation, with the Boon Wurrung people recognised as local custodians. The town was named after Sir Edward Pakenham, a British major general who served in the Peninsular War and was killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. European families took up large land selections in the district from the late 1830s, and a railway station opened in 1877 on the line linking Melbourne to Gippsland. Over recent decades Pakenham has become one of the city's major growth areas, its population and infrastructure expanding rapidly through estates such as Lakeside, Heritage Springs and Cardinia Lakes. The suburb sits on the Princes Highway, with a bypass carrying through-traffic around the centre, and is served by several railway stations marking the end of Melbourne's electrified suburban network.

6. 6

   Reservoir (Vic.), VIC

   Population 51,096 · Median income $1,541/wk · SEIFA 988

   Reservoir sits about twelve kilometres north of central Melbourne, within the City of Darebin. The land was first surveyed by Robert Hoddle in 1837 and drew its boundaries from the earlier Jika Jika and Keelbundoora parishes. The Rose Shamrock Hotel opened on Plenty Road in 1854, and a post office followed around 1921, by which time Reservoir had taken shape as a suburb. Its name comes from a trio of water reservoirs first built in 1863 and known collectively as the Preston Reservoir, which still helps supply Melbourne's inner and western suburbs; the Maroondah Aqueduct was added between 1886 and 1891 to feed them. In 1914 Thomas Dyer Edwardes gave the City of Preston some thirty-four acres of land, later developed into Edwardes Lake Park. Today the suburb mixes established brick and weatherboard homes with newer developments, and is served by the Edwardes Street and Broadway shopping strips.

7. 7

   Blacktown, NSW

   Population 50,961 · Median income $1,774/wk · SEIFA 965

8. 8

   Berwick, VIC

   Population 50,298 · Median income $2,113/wk · SEIFA 1043

   Berwick lies about 41 kilometres south-east of central Melbourne, within the City of Casey. An early leaseholder, Robert Gardiner, named it after his birthplace of Berwick-on-Tweed on the Scottish border. The district began as part of the Cardinia Creek pastoral run, and subdivision from 1854 brought a store, post office, hotel and a flour mill, with wheat, barley and potatoes giving way over time to dairying and cheese-making. The Berwick Agricultural Society, traced back to 1848, is among the oldest farming societies in Victoria. A quarry opened in 1859 to supply ballast for the railway that arrived in 1877; its worked-out pit is now the Wilson Botanic Park. The Mechanics' Institute and Free Library dates from 1862, and the poplars lining High Street were planted as an Avenue of Honour to the district's First World War dead. Parts of the 1959 film On the Beach were shot locally, and several streets carry the names of its cast. As Melbourne spread eastward late in the twentieth century the surrounding farmland was subdivided and the population grew quickly through the 1990s and 2000s. Berwick was the home of Edwin 'Teddy' Flack, Australia's first Olympian, who won two running golds at the 1896 Athens Games and is buried in the local cemetery.

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   Werribee, VIC

   Population 50,027 · Median income $1,645/wk · SEIFA 951

   Werribee is a fast-growing suburb on Melbourne's south-western edge, about thirty-two kilometres from the city and the administrative centre of the City of Wyndham. It sits on the Werribee River roughly midway between Melbourne and Geelong, and takes its name from an Aboriginal word of the Wathawurrung and Boonwurrung languages said to mean 'backbone' or 'spine'. Laid out as a farming township in the 1850s, it was first called Wyndham and was renamed Werribee in 1904, by which time the Melbourne-to-Geelong railway had given it a station. The grand pastoral estate of Thomas Chirnside survives as Werribee Park, and the suburb is best known today for that mansion and its gardens, the Victoria State Rose Garden, and the Werribee Open Range Zoo.

10. 10

    Port Macquarie, NSW

    Population 47,693 · Median income $1,282/wk · SEIFA 969

    Port Macquarie sits at the mouth of the Hastings River on the New South Wales Mid North Coast, about 390 kilometres north of Sydney. It lies within Birpai country, and the Birpai people are recognised as the traditional custodians, long knowing the place as Guruk. The explorer John Oxley named the harbour in 1818 after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and from 1821 it served as a penal settlement for convicts who had reoffended. Today the town trades on its string of surf beaches, the convict-built St Thomas' Anglican Church of the 1820s, and a well-known koala hospital that nurses injured wildlife. The rainforest boardwalk at Sea Acres National Park brings the subtropical coast within easy reach.

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    Dubbo, NSW

    Population 43,516 · Median income $1,690/wk · SEIFA 966

    Dubbo is the largest city in the Orana region of central-western New South Wales, set on the Macquarie River about 390 kilometres north-west of Sydney. Evidence of Wiradjuri habitation in the area stretches back tens of thousands of years, and the name is thought to come from a Wiradjuri word, though its precise meaning is uncertain. European pastoralists arrived from the late 1820s; the village was gazetted in 1849, became a municipality in 1872 and was proclaimed a city in 1966. A major road and rail freight hub, Dubbo is best known for the open-range Taronga Western Plains Zoo and the heritage-listed Old Dubbo Gaol. Its economy spans agriculture, meat processing, health, retail and tourism for the surrounding region.

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    Glen Waverley, VIC

    Population 42,642 · Median income $1,918/wk · SEIFA 1079

    Glen Waverley lies about 19 km south-east of central Melbourne and is the council seat of the City of Monash. Once orchard and farming country settled from the mid-nineteenth century, its post office opened in 1885 under the name Black Flat before the suburb was renamed Glen Waverley in 1921; the 'Waverley' is borrowed from a Sir Walter Scott novel. Rapid post-war development through the 1950s to 1970s filled it with houses on generously sized blocks, many now being renewed through subdivision. It was also home to Victoria's first McDonald's, opened in 1973 and for a time the longest-surviving in the country. Today Glen Waverley is a busy commercial and transport hub, anchored by The Glen shopping centre and the terminus of the Glen Waverley railway line.

13. 13

    Orange, NSW

    Population 41,232 · Median income $1,641/wk · SEIFA 975

    Orange is a cool-climate city in the Central West of New South Wales, about 250 kilometres west of Sydney and sitting high on the inland tablelands at over 860 metres. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the fruit: the surveyor Major Thomas Mitchell named it in 1846 after the Prince of Orange, whom he had served alongside in the Peninsular War. The district lies on Wiradjuri country, and an 1851 gold strike at nearby Ophir helped touch off the Australian gold rush. Today Orange is known for its cool-climate wineries, its apple and stone-fruit orchards and its produce, with Mount Canobolas rising to the south-west.

14. 14

    Castle Hill (NSW), NSW

    Population 40,874 · Median income $2,551/wk · SEIFA 1124

15. 15

    Auburn (NSW), NSW

    Population 39,333 · Median income $1,533/wk · SEIFA 908

    Auburn is a multicultural suburb of Western Sydney, about 16 kilometres west of the central business district, today part of Cumberland City Council. The Wangal clan are recognised among the original inhabitants of the district; the celebrated colonial-era figures Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo were both Wangal people. In February 1793 the surrounding area became one of the colony's first free-settler farming districts, granted to a small group that included Quaker families and known as Liberty Plains — a proud heritage still echoed in the local motto, 'Liberty, with steady zeal'. The township itself was surveyed in the late 1870s and named Auburn after Oliver Goldsmith's poem 'The Deserted Village', which opens 'Sweet Auburn! Loveliest village of the plain'. Successive waves of migration have since made Auburn one of Sydney's most diverse suburbs, home to the landmark Auburn Botanical Gardens and the Turkish-built Gallipoli Mosque.

16. 16

    Sunbury, VIC

    Population 38,851 · Median income $1,925/wk · SEIFA 1000

    Sunbury is a satellite town on the north-western fringe of Melbourne, within the City of Hume. It lies on the country of the Wurundjeri people, for whom a recorded name for the district is Koorakoorakup. Settlers arrived in the 1830s, and the brothers William and Samuel Jackson named the township after Sunbury-on-Thames in England when it was laid out in the 1850s. Sunbury's enduring claim to fame is Rupertswood, the grand mansion the Clarke family built in the 1870s: during the touring English cricket team's visit at Christmas 1882, Lady Clarke burnt a bail and presented the ashes in a small urn to the captain, Ivo Bligh — the origin of cricket's storied Ashes. The estate is now Salesian College, and in the early 1970s the district hosted the well-remembered Sunbury Pop Festival. Today it is a fast-growing commuter town close to Melbourne Airport.

17. 17

    St Albans (Vic.), VIC

    Population 38,042 · Median income $1,205/wk · SEIFA 866

    St Albans is a large, multicultural suburb about 17 kilometres north-west of central Melbourne, within the City of Brimbank. It was laid out as a township in 1887, when the Cosmopolitan Land and Banking Company subdivided the land during a speculative boom. The company's manager, Alfred Padley, arranged with Victorian Railways for a station, and insisted it be named St Albans after his family's connection with St Albans Cathedral in England. A post office followed in 1888, and the settlement grew slowly as a dormitory suburb for the factories of nearby Sunshine and Deer Park. After the Second World War its population surged with the arrival of migrants from Malta, Italy and the former Yugoslavia, who built a cluster of Orthodox and Catholic churches. More recent decades have brought a large Vietnamese community, and St Albans today is among Melbourne's most diverse suburbs.

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    Baldivis, WA

    Population 37,697 · Median income $2,096/wk · SEIFA 995

    Baldivis is a fast-growing residential district south of Perth, within the City of Rockingham. Its unusual name was coined by settlers drawn to the area under the Group Settlement Scheme of the 1920s, and is said to derive from three ships that carried migrants to Western Australia in 1922, all within six weeks of one another — the BALranald, the DIogenes and the JerVIS Bay. The three vessels shared more than a season: each was making its maiden voyage, and all had been built in the same shipyard in the same year. Land beside Baldivis Road was once set aside for a tramway linking Jandakot and Karnup to serve the scheme, though it was never built through the town itself. Many local roads, such as Fifty Road, still carry the group numbers of the original settlement blocks. Urban development arrived in the 1990s, when the western portion was rezoned and Stockland opened the first estate, Settlers Hills.

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    Baulkham Hills, NSW

    Population 37,415 · Median income $2,474/wk · SEIFA 1111

    Baulkham Hills is a suburb in the Hills District of Greater Sydney, about 30 kilometres north-west of the central business district and largely inside The Hills Shire, which it once gave its name to and served as the seat of. The land was originally home to the Bidjigal people, understood to be a clan of the Darug, who are remembered today in the Bidjigal Reserve spreading across several neighbouring suburbs. One of the district's first European settlers, William Joyce, took up a grant here in the 1790s and built a farmhouse that still stands. The suburb's name came from Andrew McDougall, a settler who thought the area resembled Buckholm Hills near his home in the Scottish county of Roxburgh; it was officially recognised in 1802, and the post office followed in 1856. Long a farming district of orchards and smallholdings, Baulkham Hills was subdivided for housing through the 20th century and is now a busy residential centre served by the Sydney Metro Northwest line. Its Orange Blossom Festival, a nod to the area's citrus-growing past, is held each spring.

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    Frankston, VIC

    Population 37,331 · Median income $1,387/wk · SEIFA 953

    Frankston sits on the eastern shore of Port Phillip about 39 km south-east of central Melbourne, and is the administrative heart of the City of Frankston. The land is the Country of the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin nation, long an important fishing ground and meeting place. A seaside destination since the 1880s, the suburb has one of Victoria's most popular and cleanest swimming beaches and is often called the 'gateway to the Mornington Peninsula' for the wine-and-tourism region just to its south. The origin of the name is uncertain, with several competing theories; a popular one links it to Frank Liardet, an early settler who took up land here in 1847. Official land sales established the village in 1854.

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    Hoppers Crossing, VIC

    Population 37,216 · Median income $1,580/wk · SEIFA 945

    Hoppers Crossing is a large residential suburb in Melbourne's outer south-west, roughly 24 kilometres from the central city and part of the City of Wyndham. The wider district lies on the Country of the Boonwurrung and Wathaurong peoples, who belong to the Kulin nation, and whose traditional lands took in the volcanic plains around the Werribee River. The suburb takes its name from Elizabeth Hopper, who worked as a gatekeeper at the level crossing on what is now the Werribee railway line, opening and closing the heavy wooden gates whenever a train passed. She and her husband Stephen, a long-serving railway ganger, raised their large family nearby. Until the 1960s the area was mostly open farmland, but it grew quickly from the 1970s as Melbourne expanded westward, gaining its first primary school and railway station around 1970. Today it is a major suburban centre, anchored by the sprawling Pacific Werribee shopping complex.

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    Southport (Qld), QLD

    Population 36,786 · Median income $1,268/wk · SEIFA 968

    Southport is the most populous suburb of the Gold Coast and home to the city's central business district, set where the Nerang River empties into The Broadwater at the southern end of Moreton Bay. First known as Nerang Creek Heads, it was renamed Southport as the southernmost port of colonial Queensland, surveyed in the 1870s as a timber port shipping logs north to Brisbane. Its fortunes turned in the 1880s when the Queensland Governor, Sir Anthony Musgrave, chose it for his summer residence — the 'Summer Place' — sealing the township's reputation as the colony's pre-eminent seaside resort, soon served by a pier and a railway. Long associated with grand schools such as The Southport School and St Hilda's, Southport is today the Gold Coast's civic heart, with the G:link tram, the Broadwater Parklands, and a riverside university-and-hospital precinct.

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    Truganina, VIC

    Population 36,305 · Median income $2,126/wk · SEIFA 1020

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    Mount Waverley, VIC

    Population 35,340 · Median income $2,066/wk · SEIFA 1092

    Mount Waverley lies about 16 kilometres south-east of central Melbourne in the City of Monash. Assistant Surveyor Eugene Bellairs set out the district, then part of the Parish of Mulgrave, on a grid of straight roads exactly a mile apart in 1853, and the post office followed in 1905. The suburb is known for heritage streets laid out in the 1930s, among them the ambitious Glen Alvie estate near Mount Waverley Village, which was planned as a country-club garden suburb with tennis courts, a bowling green and palm-lined Sherwood Park; its original streets were laid in concrete rather than asphalt and survive much as they were. The Great Depression stalled building, and houses only rose in earnest from the early 1950s as Melbourne spread eastward. The much-loved Melbourne street directory Melway was first produced in a Mount Waverley garage in 1966. Today the suburb is a hub for electronics and IT firms, has a strong Chinese, Greek and Italian community, and keeps generous bushland reserves along Damper and Scotchmans Creeks.

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    Bankstown, NSW

    Population 34,933 · Median income $1,331/wk · SEIFA 913

    Bankstown lies in south-western Sydney, about 19 kilometres from the city centre, and is the busy commercial heart of the City of Canterbury-Bankstown. Before European settlement the surrounding Cumberland Plain woodland was the Country of the Bediagal people, whose lands bordered those of the Dharawal and Darug. In 1795 Matthew Flinders and George Bass rowed up the Georges River and reported favourably on the land along its banks; Governor John Hunter soon established one of the colony's pioneer settlements there. He named it after Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist who had sailed to Australia with Captain James Cook in 1770. The early riverside settlement is partly preserved within Mirambeena Regional Park. From the 1940s Bankstown Airport and wartime aircraft manufacturing drove rapid industrial growth, and post-war migration made the suburb one of the most multicultural in the country. Paul Keating, Australia's twenty-fourth prime minister, grew up locally and is honoured by a park bearing his name.

Rankings are editorial, based on the public data shown on each suburb page. See our methodology.